Chapter 14 - MULDOON:

  It would have been easy to hate Jocasta.

  The woman complained and barked orders like a drill sergeant with a migraine. She even had the gall to come up with nicknames for Muldoon and Ruld, much to their shared chagrin. But Muldoon, ever the observer, saw past the jaguar’s razor-edge demeanor. Beneath the clipped commands and stern face, there was something else: a deep well of worry and a sense of duty that ran bone-deep.

  Banishing his daydreaming, the wolf craned his neck, giving a low whistle as the water treatment plant came into view - a squat concrete and steel fortress perched beside the river like a beast trying to tame it. Thick pipes, wide as old-growth tree trunks, arched down into the water. Inside, the city’s waste would be filtered, purified, and pumped back upstream

  His comms crackled to life.

  “Horny, Chuckles, I hope that Grumpy isn’t chewing your ears off already.”

  In the backseat of the cruiser, Dylan puffed with indignation.

  Ruld pressed a button on the radio. “We’ve got eyes on the facility now.”

  “Good. Reports say workers are barricaded in the admin block. Unknown hostiles moving through the main tanks. You are not to fire first. DAIR protocols stand. If they surrender, we take them alive.”

  “Copy,” Ruld rumbled.

  Muldoon leaned forward slightly, a grin creeping into his voice.

  “If we meet the moose, should I dip myself in barbecue sauce or ketchup while I gently ask him to surrender nicely?”

  A few scattered laughs came through the channel they were using.

  “Just use your judgment, Chuckles.”

  =================================

  By the time they wrapped up the docks operation, Muldoon’s gear was streaked with grime and stiff with dried blood. His chest plate bore a new gouge where a lucky shot had struck. He was glad that the plate had done its job. The surface was chewed, pitted, and rain-slick. After the containment sweep, their unit merged with the wider enforcement force and spent the next hours canvassing the river corridor. One miserable, soaked kilometer at a time.

  When the rain returned — first a mist, then a full downpour — the work got worse. Visibility dropped. Everystep became a cold slosh.

  They found two stragglers in the lower wharf. One surrendered. The other ran.

  Not very fast.

  Ruld brought him down fast. No questions. No drama. Just decisive action.

  Now, with evening dragging in, Muldoon’s back muscles throbbed. His back ached. His hand twitched, too much pressure over a long period, not enough to rest.

  Worse. Deep in his gut, a familiar knot twisted — the one that told him this wasn’t over. That this whole thing was a slow burn, he couldn’t see the end of it, which made him so tired.

  He hated that feeling.

  They decided to move the cruisers further down the road and parked two blocks shy of the first warehouse that made up the facility’s perimeter. It was an old facility still in use, storing dredged sand from the river for construction.

  Muldoon let out a low grunt as he stepped out and saw they were the last to arrive. The other teams clustered near the small wooden-frame office.

  The water treatment plant loomed across the road, mostly dark. From this distance, it looked like a rotting shrine — the water tanks rising like half-buried eggs, catwalks threading between them like rusted sinew. Blue floodlights glowed in the fog, casting the scene in a ghostly haze. The entire place buzzed with a low, unnatural hum — like the building was holding its breath.

  “I sure wouldn’t like to live nearby. Imagine going to sleep with that noise every night,” Muldoon mused

  Jocasta stood beside her cruiser, arms crossed, carbine hanging loose across her back. She didn’t look over as they approached, her eyes never left the building.

  Muldoon took his gloves off, chewing the last of a jerky stick that was in Morty’s package. He glanced between the facility and the sand depot, ears flicking.

  “Place gives me the creeps. Did you need a bathroom break so bad you brought us to the biggest litter box in town?”

  Jocasta clicked her tongue, not looking at him, tilting her snout up in the air slightly. Joel — the lynx captain of the other squad — squinted at him with his one good eye.

  The older lynx didn’t use an eyepatch. His fur was a mix of golden and yellow with white streaks of age. A pink ragged scar ran from his eyebrow to his chin, where his second eye used to be.

  Muldoon wondered about the story behind that. Preds didn’t get new scars. Cuts closing fully. And Joel was a pred. Not a tall one, he and the wolf were the same size. Tall for a regular.

  Behind them, Dylan cleared his throat; the raven had plugged a big modified terminal to the cruiser’s MDC and had it open on top of the car’s hood.

  “Everyone’s tired and wants to go home. So here’s what we know about the situation,” Dylan said without really looking at the rest of the group. He was hunched over the big terminal, tapping through network diagnostics, the screen painting his face in sickly green light. “The facility has a few camera arrays, motion sensors, and alarms at the entrances. Twenty minutes ago, alarms tripped and in-house security called to their head office, which is on the distribution hub in the Central Borough.”

  “Do we have footage?” asked one of Joel’s guys, a lizard with bright shades of orange and blue.

  Dylan shook his head. “Sadly no, Lou. Somebody hit the alarms. Cams were up for a moment, then cut.”

  “That’s the main problem now. They went dark,” Jocasta added. Her tone was calm, but clipped. “Either the invaders pulled the plug internally, and no one sees anything... or only severed the external connections."

  “So what? We bust in and poke holes in them with the guns. Problemas no more,” Lou said.

  Joel hit the back of the lizard’s head. But he didn’t put strength into it.

  “Now and then I wish I could strangle you,” Jocasta said.

  “You can. I like my women mean and kinky,” Lou grinned. “But you never said yes when I invited you for a date, gatinha.”

  This time, Joel smacked him harder.

  “Think, you stupid lizard,” Joel said. “They might still have the camera feed running. There is a risk of us being spotted as we get in.”

  “That leaves us two options,” Jocasta said, nodding. “Either we risk it and just go in, or we go through the maintenance tunnels.”

  Muldoon leaned on the hood beside Jocasta. “Can we do that? My guy here is kinda wide.”

  He rubbed Ruld's stomach and got promptly slapped.

  “I say we go in as is,” Ruld said, raising a hand as Muldoon was about to poke him again. “So far, all the guys we came across were disorganized, plus there is the time factor against us.”

  Muldoon tilted his head, brow raised. “Optimist, huh?”

  “Joel, you are the one with an actual full team here. What do you say?” Jocasta asked.

  “Sorry, Captain, they put you in charge. So I’d rather keep that way. Your ass if things go bad.”

  “Well. Let’s be democratic. Arms up to a more direct approach, keep them down if we should try the maintenance tunnels.”

  Ruld, Elior the fox, and a woman in Joel’s team were outvoted. Dylan started explaining the layout of the maintenance and sewer systems near the facility.

  “Everything ok?” Muldoon asked, stepping closer to his partner.

  “Yes,” the big rhino sighed, not looking at him. “Just wish I could see the end of this day.”

  “Hey, that was what I was thinking. Man, I wanna stop by that place near the precinct. The bacon was so good.”

  Ruld huffed a soft laugh. “Yeah…”

  Muldoon lowered his voice. “For real, you okay? I didn’t get a chance to check in after this morning. All those jumping and being a living tank that you did at the docks ought to get even someone like you tired.”

  Ruld flinched for a split second but then offered a smirk.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not a speeder. Those power jumps don’t drain me too much. Strength use barely scratches my reserves. I’m just tired-tired. Not predator-starved.”

  “So,” Muldoon said cheerfully, “I don’t need to worry about you going for a nibble? Wife says I’m a snack.”

  “You are an ass.”

  “Funny. She also says that. Quite often.”

  =================================

  Luckily for them, Ruld had been underselling his nose. He and Lou stopped cold the moment the squad reached the first of the underground maintenance tunnels.

  The rhino was the largest in the whole group, but Lou’s tail was as long as he was tall — and it constantly twitched. He had to refrain from thumping it on the ground as he and Ruld had a hushed conversation.

  “Gatinha, I think some of our bad guys used this place to get in,” Lou said.

  Around him, several pairs of hands went to hostlers and guns.

  Jocasta crouched next to them. “Can you tell how many?”

  “Hard to say. Plus, the rain didn’t help. Neither did the lovely smells you’d expect from a place like this,” Lou said. “At least five, but that’s a lowball.

  “Don’t look at me,” Ruld grunted. “I only smelled two, and because they have some blood on them.”

  “Let’s pray that it’s their blood.”

  The wolf watched his partner and the lizard crouch down in an animalistic fashion, muttering about the different types of scents they could sense, their snouts almost brushing the floor and inhaling the lingering scents.

  Muldoon knew that good predator enforcers were hard to come by.

  Most fresh recruits were reckless. Untempered by the harsh realities of life, or just too bold and drunk on their new status. They tend to drop like flies before they grow wise enough to know how to handle themselves.

  In short, new predator enforcers were stupid, too cocky, and hungry for glory. Prone to being taken advantage of. He sort of understood it. Part of him envied the extra powers that preds could unlock. It wasn’t a mystery why so many people with the gene went into the rogue path and had to be hunted down.

  Deep down, Muldoon wondered how a feral wolf would down on him considering his inability to track by scent. And it was very humbling when he knew that some of the opponents he would face also had that capability.

  Next to him, Dylan clicked his tongue in silent discomfort as Ruld and Lou did their jobs

  “You don’t come a lot to the field, huh?“ he questioned the raven.

  Dylan shrugged. “All hands on deck tonight. Precinct got our reinforcement called back to the center of the Borough. Something happened at the Public Market.”

  “Huh? I didn’t hear about that.”

  “They sent the alert to my terminal and to Jocasta’s, “Dylan replied. “That is why the captain is so pissed.”

  Jocasta’s head turned sharply. She raised her hand.

  “Can you two shut up while the guys are doing their thing?”

  Muldoon shrugged and gave her a thumbs-up.

  After a short debate, the team opted for a secondary tunnel. No need to walk into a possible trap.

  The space was a dug out tunnel reinforced with arched walls of concrete. Big power lines ran on top of their heads, and the corridor would be large enough for the cruiser to run there if it wasn’t for the sunken part of the floor that allowed for water to drain.

  Dylan stayed back with the cruisers with two of Joel’s people. Their job was to keep eyes on the facility in case the predator tried to escape, or to warn in case enemy reinforcements arrived.

  The tunnel exit was a narrow utility hatch, half-rusted and stubborn. Ruld put his shoulder to it and shoved. The door gave with a wheeze of steel and a groan that echoed too loudly in the confined space. They froze in place, waiting for a rebuke, like statues ready for violence. Ears flickering, trying to detect something.

  Nothing.

  One by one, they climbed into the facility’s underbelly.

  The maintenance sub-level stank of oil, mold, and machinery that outlived its purpose. Water dripped from sagging nests of copper wire. Metal plating underfoot was slick, rusted in places, and patterned with old boot prints.

  Even without workers doing their tasks, the facility wasn’t idle. Most of the processes were automated. So the thrum of the machines filled the world around them.

  Jocasta took point with Lou. Carbine sweeping left to right. Lou sniffed the air, forked tongue flicking in and out of his mouth to taste the air. Muldoon followed, rifle angled low. Ruld, Joel brought up the rear with a gorilla from Joel’s team. Ruld had the riot slung on his back like a tortoise shell.

  “Smells like something died,” Lou muttered.

  “Welcome to infrastructure,” Muldoon said dryly. “No one’s cleaned under here since the last century. Smells like a morgue got dumped in a pool.”

  “No, seriously. I can smell blood. Lots of it,” the lizard said, sounding serious.

  They moved silently. The best that they could. Boots thudding in damp rhythm, shadows twitching with every shift of overhead pipework. Above them, the vast concrete belly of the water treatment tanks loomed.

  Somewhere in there, the hostages were waiting.

  Somewhere in there, the predators were hunting.

  The squad swept chamber by chamber — clearing stairwells, corridors, storage bays. The facility layout was old-school — cramped industrial corridors with supply closets or leading to metal catwalks on top of the huge water decantation tank.

  Joel’s boots clunked as he stepped across a rusted grate. “This place is a damn maze.”

  They reached a cavernous room with massive pumps half-submerged in dark water. Thick pipes groaned, shuttling sludge beneath their feet. It was where the waste water and sewage were first pumped to be chemically treated.

  Lou and Ruld flinched back as if they had taken a punch to the face.

  Chemical injectors lined the walls — some still hissing weakly. From there, the flow was diverted into multiple tracks for treatment. They didn’t advance into this place because it was an enclosed space, and no other exits were visible.

  They moved forward into the screening bay — a place where clotted debris and waste gathered along grated filters. Muldoon leaned over the railing and stared into the murk. The water here was thicker. Still. Not even the rain had stirred it. These tanks were meant to hold sludge and waste for days, letting the heavier gunk settle before fermentation. Somewhere down there, anaerobic bacteria were probably still working. The idea made his fur crawl.

  “You know. I used to tell people to drink more water. I take it back,” Muldoon muttered

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  “Keep moving,” Jocasta replied.

  The hall twisted and opened into a bioreactor wing — a long corridor lined with transparent tubes of green-brown sludge. Humming pumps fed oxygen into the sludge. Tiny bubbles climbed like ghosts.

  When they got to the bioreactors, where a network of bacterial stages slowly worked, breaking down harmful waste. Most of the lights were flickering. Something had clawed up the walls — deep gouges running like animal tracks toward the ceiling.

  Further ahead, more fighting signs and a blood trail.

  Thick smears painted the corridor like someone had dragged a body through it, leaving behind long red strokes on the floor. The trail led to a door at the end of the hall. One of the site’s labs.

  Muldoon’s stomach tightened.

  Joel placed his big ear against the door. After a few seconds, he gave the thumbs up.

  “Arms ready,” Jocasta whispered.

  Ruld didn’t speak, but Muldoon sensed how his breathing had changed. Shallower. Measured.

  Jocasta opened the door.

  And the world stopped as their snouts felt the concentrated aroma, sour, metallic.

  The room was painted in blood. Thick and starting to coagulate, creating viscous pools along the floor. Crimson smeared across the walls, sprayed across the old machines like some grim graffiti.

  At the center, lying sprawled across a reinforced work table, was a wolf — no, a beast.

  He was enormous. Nine feet, at least. Built like a nightmare. Black fur matted with gore. One of his legs twitched faintly, muscle spasming in sleep. His chest rose and fell as he snored. His belly was distended, grotesquely rounded.

  You could see the shape of a body inside. Arms. Legs. Curled fetal-like beneath the stretched skin. Fat congealed blobs of blood dripped from the table.

  Next to the beast, a half-dismembered torso slumped nearby. A human arm flung across the floor.

  No one moved.

  Muldoon’s brain kicked into rewind — remembering what Ruld had said back at the docks.

  Most of us would need to lie down and digest after taking in such a big chunk of biomass. If I do it, I’d be useless for the rest of the day.

  The wolf understood that now.

  Joel stepped closer without being asked.

  No hesitation, just purpose. He got behind the big wolf, and the massive predator clicked his jaws, licking his lips as he stirred in his sleep.

  The lynx placed his gun on the wolf’s forehead.

  CRACK.

  A single headshot.

  The predator's skull popped. Brain and blood sprayed on the table top under him. The massive body gave a twitch. Then lay still again. The following silence felt heavy.

  Muldoon let out a breath. “Shit.”

  Joel didn’t lower his gun. “We’re not playing around. This ain't a zoo. It eats, it dies. I know you said we should ask them to surrender, Captain, but I made an exception for this one.”

  She clicked her tongue. “Good job.”

  Jocasta stepped closer to the table, boots sticking faintly to the gore-covered floor. She stared down at the massive belly of the dead wolf, its shape swollen like some obscene mockery of life. Her hand hovered over it.

  Muldoon frowned. “Don’t.”

  “We have to check,” she said flatly.

  Her gloved hand pressed gently against the swollen gut. The skin was taut, distended to its limit. She moved carefully, slowly, probing the contours — the suggestion of a head, a knee, maybe the curve of a spine visible just beneath the fur and flesh. The belly gave slightly under pressure. No twitch. No recoil.

  “Nothing,” she finally said. “No breath. No motion. Whoever it was... they’re gone.”

  Muldoon looked away, jaw clenched. “Shit job,” he muttered under his breath. “Hell of a way to die.”

  “Sometimes,” Ruld said quietly, “if it’s a clean swallow and we get there early… there’s a chance. A small one.”

  Joel scoffed bitterly. “This wasn’t that.”

  Jocasta finally stepped back, flicking blood from her gloves. Her expression didn’t change, but her ears flicked in discomfort.

  “Too late for that person. But, still we had to make sure,” she said. “Considering the scales on that torso, and that human hand, that makes the person in the gut a third victim. But I think this bastard didn’t hard-vore the other two. We might find other preds on a meal nap too.”

  For a second, the room was filled only with the soft ticking of a pipe in the corner — condensation dripping into a puddle near the half-torso in the corner. Muldoon glanced back at the bloated belly. The slack jaw hanging open in his blood-drenched face.

  Even in death, the predator seemed smug. Like it had gotten what it came for.

  The DAIR officers — most of them predators themselves — didn’t speak. But Muldoon could read their faces. Vexed. Ashamed. Like they’d just seen a relative relapse into something they’d worked their whole life to suppress.

  No one said the word for it, but they all felt it: shame.

  They stepped out in silence, leaving the door half-open behind them. The blood trail stretched like a wound down the corridor.

  None of them looked back.

  The fight didn’t take long to come to them after that.

  As the team moved deeper into the facility, a gaunt canine peeled out of the shadows of machinery — limbs too long, body jittering: a speeder.

  He came flying at them, doing a dropkick that hit Joel’s side and sent the lynx tumbling over a guardrail. Joel landed with a painful thud on the lower floor.

  The goon was next to Muldoon before the wolf had a chance to react.

  Ruld’s face intercepted the punch destined for the other enforcer. The rhino then raised both arms, blocking the barrage that followed, stepping fully in front of the canine.

  The speeder’s grin split wider, manic, as he forced the rhino to step back. He hit Ruld like a storm. A blur of fists, elbows, knees — a barrage so fast it blurred into one long impact. Each blow cracked against the rhino’s hide, popping like gunfire. His head snapped, jaw clenched. His chest thudded under the impacts. The speeder howled, throwing everything into it.

  Muldoon raised his rifle. Jocasta grabbed it and forced the muzzle down. She hissed, “Wait.”

  The storm kept hitting.

  Thud-thud-thud.

  Ruld barely budged. His skin darkened under the blows, getting coated in a deep dark red of blood. The snapping of bones, a constant. He grunted once, more in annoyance than pain. The speeder’s breath turned ragged, strikes slowing. Then there was another crack — different this time. Louder.

  The speeder let go a moan of pain and disbelief. Fists hung crooked, knuckles shattered. Sharp bits of bones poking out here and there. He staggered back, staring at his own ruined hands.

  “What… what the fuck… ”

  Then it became clear that all the blood and the sound of bones came from the speeder.

  That’s what happens when you decide to pummel a wall of rock. You hurt yourself. And if you don’t stop, you end up like that.

  And now it was the rock’s turn.

  Ruld’s eyes burned. He lowered his head. Took two stomping steps. And launched himself against the now skinny pred, slamming him against the wall. Air exploded out of the canine’s lungs.

  The speeder slumped to the floor in a pile of twitching limbs, blood dribbling from his nose and the corners of his mouth. His chest heaved, eyes fluttering in unconscious spasms.

  “Is he alive?” Elior asked, peeking over Muldoon’s shoulder.

  “Barely,” Ruld replied, brushing cracked bone fragments from his arm. “He’ll wake. Not soon, though.”

  “Let me slap him awake then,” Muldoon said.

  Jocasta stepped forward, flicking her fingers. “We don’t have time,” she muttered.

  “But he might give us answers,” Elior countered.

  “No.” Ruld's voice was unusually sharp. “He’s not stable. If we wake him up now, he will be a blabbing mess. I know, I’ve done it before. Either we wait, or we move on.”

  Muldoon crouched next to the limp canine, peering into his half-closed eyes. “So, what to do with him?”

  Lou coiled his tail around the speeder’s neck. He glanced at Jocasta asking permission and, when she nodded. There was a crack — soft, but final.

  The fox grunted. “Fine. But if we catch another one, I wanna try talking.”

  Joel’s voice crackled over comms. “Still breathing. Just bruised. Someone toss me a rope to climb back up?”

  Lou tied down a rope to the guardrail and dropped the other end. But, before Joel could reach the top, the first shots came from above — sharp cracks splitting the silence.

  Elior took a hit on the tail and yelped in pain.

  They ran for cover. As they got into some protection, the squad wheeled, weapons raised, but the rafters were already empty.

  Muldoon nudged the fox.

  “Go talk to them.”

  “Fuck you, central guy.”

  They could hear the enemies shouting to each other as they rushed down to meet them. Voices bouncing against the metal wall of the water treatment plant, making it hard to pinpoint their locations.

  A half-dozen, then a dozen more, bursting from side passages — wolves and some dogs, a few hyenas, a hulking bear. Not organized, but overwhelming. Teeth flashing. Just a few had firearms. And they were so amateurish that they were getting their own allies in the crossfire.

  Jocasta’s roar filled the comms. “Hold your lines!”

  Muldoon fired — muzzle flare lighting a wolf’s snarl as it dropped mid-lunge. Another body slammed into him from the side, snarling hot breath in his face. He went down hard, armor clattering against concrete.

  And then Ruld was there.

  He’d strapped the riot shield to his arm. Now he moved like a tank. Steady and brutal. Unstoppable. The goons formed a snarling wall pushing against him.

  “Raise it,” Muldoon shouted.

  Ruld didn’t understand until he saw the wolf crouching down. He raised the wide shield up two feet, exposing the feet and knees of the enemies. Jocasta chuckled and knelt next to Muldoon.

  They opened fire from under the shield.

  It felt like chopping trees. That is, if trees could scream and bleed.

  Behind them, the rest of the squad held the rear.

  Lou fought like a bar-room brawler with artillery attached — his tail snapping through the air like a whip, breaking ribs and knocking weapons out of hands with brutal efficiency. He ran with that familiar lizard awkwardness, all elbows and momentum, but his tail carved open gaps in enemy lines that he immediately filled with gunfire. Each heavy crack of tail against concrete or flesh made it obvious the big reptile’s hide was every bit as tough as Ruld’s.

  Even as his rifle barked, Muldoon’s mind raced.

  That was the difference between predator enforcers and these random goons. Both were strong, but he could see the difference in training and teamwork in action. And even knowing these enforcers were on his side, it was no wonder why some people were afraid of the DAIR.

  Muldoon’s world was muzzle-flash. He pivoted tight, firing bursts to keep two wolves from flanking. Ruld slowly advanced forward, clearing a path.

  After the initial burst on their legs, some of the preds saw the gap under the shield and tried to dive under to reach for them. Muldoon got one between the eyes. Others were trying to get around him, but the fox from Jocasta’s team had that area covered.

  They weren’t just holding the line, they were pushing it forward.

  The facility dissolved into chaos. Gunfire rattled the rafters, screams mingled with roars. Jocasta’s voice cut through, sharp and steady: “Back wall! Form on me!”

  The squad pressed toward her, cutting down anything in their path. Ruld was the wedge — charging into clusters of enemies, taking hits, giving back worse. His shield locked one moment, his fists the next, every movement brutal economy.

  Muldoon covered him, laying down suppressive bursts, but his own hands shook. He couldn’t unsee it: Ruld shrugging off wounds that would cripple a man, his muscles bunching like coiled steel, that pred focus in his eyes — half instinct, half training.

  And then, suddenly, it broke.

  The predators disengaged as quickly as they’d hit, peeling back into shadows, slipping through broken doors. A good number of bodies were left behind, twitching. Most just still.

  Jocasta lifted her rifle, eyes narrowing. “That was sloppy. Too sloppy.”

  Ruld wiped blood from his forearm, nostrils flaring again. His voice rumbled like distant thunder.

  “I don’t like this. It doesn’t click,” he said as he panted hard. “Felt like they threw in every solo nutjob and hoped they got lucky.”

  Muldoon’s stomach dropped. He looked at the bodies cooling on the floor — half-trained, desperate, flung at DAIR like cannon fodder. Most of them looked barely adults.

  Despite the name, the DAIR didn’t only face criminal preds. They did that, but they also fought against drug gangs and all manner of crime. And even those had more coordination. Not all of these were even armed.

  “Well, Horny. You don’t need to like it. You just need to do your job. At least you and Chuckles know how to do it.”

  “Folks,” Dylan’s voice came through the radio. “I can see blinking lights at the offices on top of the water tanks.”

  “So?” asked Muldoon, as he pressed the button on his own radio. “Is it a malfunction?”

  “Negative. I can see silhouettes against the windows. My guess, they put the hostages there and left them without direct supervision.”

  The team shared glances.

  “I mean, if they are locked up there,” Muldon said, “there’s no way out. No reason to post guards”.

  Jocasta nodded. “And we just made a lot of noise. Maybe they heard us and now are letting us know where they are.”

  =================================

  The stairwell was tight — one of those industrial wraparounds spiraling between two of the massive egg-shaped tanks. Steel groaned faintly underfoot, as the squad climbed, rifles up, eyes scanning every angle.

  Halfway up, gunfire greeted them.

  Bullets sparked off the railings just above. The team dove for cover, hugging the curve of the stairwell. Someone shouted. The gorilla enforcer caught a shot in the arm. Elior dragged him back, pressing a bandage hard against the bleeding wound.

  “Up top! Four of them, maybe five!” Lou hissed.

  Muldoon leaned out, raised his rifle and fired two sharp bursts. One silhouette jerked back, clipped but not down.

  Jocasta signaled with her hand “Lou, Ruld... MOVE!”

  They advanced. Lou low, Ruld up front with the riot shield raised, wide enough to cover the entire bend.

  “Push!” Jocasta barked.

  They surged upward.

  The team crested the landing into another burst of gunfire — amateurish and desperate. Ruld braced, took it full-on with the shield, and then swatted a thug into the wall with bone cracking force.

  Muldoon swept right, firing suppressive bursts to drive shooters back. Jocasta flanked left, dropping two with precise shots.

  One of the predators panicked, vaulted the railing, a last-ditch escape.

  Joel shot him mid-air. The body folded, limp before it hit the concrete below.

  “Clear!” Muldoon called.

  They paused, breathing hard. Overhead, the lights flickered again. The last few steps remained.

  Jocasta lowered her carbine slightly and then glanced at the others.

  “Let’s finish this.”

  =================================

  The upper admin office was locked from the outside — hastily chained, a rebar wedged through the doorframe. Ruld snapped the chain with a twist and kicked the door open.

  Inside, the smell was bad — blood, piss, fear. Then the faces.

  A dozen wide-eyed workers turned toward them, trembling and looking hollow. They were huddled behind upturned desks and filing cabinets along the far wall. A woman near the light switch sobbed the moment she saw them. Realizing they were DAIR, she started to shake with sobs, letting the lights on as she pressed her body against the wall and slunk down, hugging herself. An elk tried to stand, but his leg gave out, and he collapsed.

  The gorilla enforcer moved in, murmuring reassurances. Ruld dropped to one knee next to a young dino who stared blankly at a body in the corner — an older worker, half-covered with a coat, chest still.

  Lou winced. Muldoon followed his line of sight toward another room — its walls painted red with handprints.

  “Goddamn…”

  Jocasta stepped forward and scanned the survivors. “Who’s in charge here?”

  “I—I was the shift lead…” The woman near the light switch lifted her head. She was a white furred cat. Her voice trembled.

  “Good. You’re now our point. Anyone missing? Anyone armed? Anyone need to be carried?”

  “They… they ate one of us. Dragged another down the stairs. We heard them fighting… screaming. Then nothing.”

  Muldoon said nothing. Just nodded, jaw clenched. He moved to the window and peered out.

  “We need to move. Fast and quiet. We make noise, they’ll know. So stay low. Move when we say.”

  He turned back to the squad. “Ruld, you take the front with the shield. Jocasta covers the rear. Let’s ghost out of here.”

  “When did you get promoted to leader, Chuckles?” asked Jocasta. No heat to the comment.

  They’d gotten most of the workers to their feet. Some limped. Others leaned on each other, glassy-eyed and shaking.

  “I count eleven,” Jocasta said.

  The white-furred feline, the shift lead, looked up. “There were eighteen of us.”

  Muldoon froze. “You said they ate one. Another was dragged. If they are the same as…”

  “There are still some unaccounted for,” Jocasta cut in. “But there are probably more enemies here. We need to make this room secure until we get more backup, or we scout them down, like Chuckles said.”

  Multiple people protested that they wanted to get out.

  The jaguar sighed seeing those people wouldn’t stay put. They went through too much. Muldoon held back from making a smug face.

  “Fine. We will try scouting. But no one gets separated. Stay tight.”

  The survivors backed toward the wall again. One of them, a small-boned lizard, began to sob. Another — the elk from earlier — picked up a rusted pipe and held it to his chest like a lifeline.

  Then — heavy footfalls. Just outside the office door. Fast.

  Elior tensed. “We’re not alone.”

  “CONTACT!” Jocasta shouted.

  There was a blur of movement

  The attacker crashed into view like a missile, knocking Joel down. He was tall, lean, twitching with manic energy. Some sort of bovine. He wore a black jumpsuit, armored vest clung to his chest, an oversized gas mask strapped to his head; Crimson lenses seemed to glow like eyes of a demon.

  The mask hissed with each breath, short and shallow, like a predator barely holding itself back.

  He didn’t speak. He roared, deep and guttural.

  Then charged.

  Muldoon opened fire, rounds hammering the armored vest. Sparks burst from the impact points, but the predator didn’t flinch. He barreled into Lou like a freight train, shoulder checking the lizard through the air and against a filing cabinet. Impact denting the steel.

  “Shit!” Muldoon spat, diving to the side.

  The creature whirled, snapping a kick at Jocasta, who barely dodged. Ruld lunged in from behind, pinning both of the bovine's massive arms to his sides, and slammed him chest-first into the wall. Plaster cracked. The thing shrieked and kept thrashing, fighting like an animal trapped in a snare.

  Elbows jabbed. Knees bucked. Teeth gnashed behind the hiss of the mask. One lucky kick landed. A powerful kick to Ruld’s sack. The rhino fell back, rolling in pain.

  The bovine spun and took a few steps towards the workers. This guy’s skull was way too thick. Muldoon saw blood coming out where he had hit, but he was not falling down. Bones too hard.

  Lou recovered fast, blood running from his snout. The lizard came from behind, his tail snaked around the attacker’s throat, coiling tight like a muscle-bound rope.

  He yanked hard. Thick tail like a garrote. “Stay! Down!” he grunted, the strain in his arms and tail visible.

  The masked predator trashed and bucked, arms flailing. Muldoon rushed and kicked the bastard behind the knees, forcing the bovine to drop. As he fell, the wolf grabbed the mask and ripped it off.

  And that’s when it screamed.

  Not a voice. Not a cry for help. But a shriek that curdled blood — animalistic, and devoid of language. Saliva and blood sprayed as he thrashed harder, revealing sunken cheeks, bloodshot eyes, and a mouth lined with cracked teeth and blackened gums.

  Lou pulled his tail off, and for a moment, Muldoon wanted to curse the Lizard for backing away. Then he saw how the other enforcer grabbed the enemy by the horns and wrapped his tail around his legs, pinning him in place.

  Elior stepped in. Pressed his gun to the base of the bull’s neck, pointing down. He squeezed the trigger and didn’t let go. A full burst, 15 shots, all passing in between bones and making a mess inside the bull’s chest.

  The scream cut off in a choking gurgle. The predator went limp, legs spasming as he collapsed under the weight of Lou’s tail. His eyes were wide and blank. Red foam coming out of his mouth and nostrils.

  Silence fell hard.

  Everyone caught their breath, weapons still half-raised, eyes darting.

  Lou loosened his tail, letting the body drop in a boneless heap.

  Muldoon’s ears twitched as he heard something.

  A faint whisper. A crackling voice with the mechanical hiss. Something… inside the mask.

  He crouched beside the corpse, picking and flipping over the oversized gas mask. The inside smelled really bad, like old sweat. He actually felt dizzy. A small red light blinked.

  “This thing got comms,” he muttered. “It’s still transmitting.”

  Lou leaned in beside him, face grim. “Someone was talking to him?”

  “Seems like” Muldoon tried to look closer, but the smell made him gag.

  Elior grabbed it. At the same time, a voice bled through the static. It was female, and she sounded impatient.

  "...—Unit Seven, report. Can you see them? Confirm the status of the DAIR agents."

  That spiked their attention.

  The hair on Muldoon's neck stood up. “Fuck, there are more,” he growled.

  Elior turned the mask around. “Let me try something,” he said, picking up his radio and trying to sync with the communication device inside the mask.

  The voice returned — sharper now. More tense and alert.

  “Wait… That’s not Seven. Who is this?”

  Elior’s ears flattened. His mouth opened. “Fuck my a…”

  Beep.

  The gas mask detonated like a frag grenade.

  A flash of light. A shattering crack. Then a kick of pressure and heat.

  Muldoon hit the floor hard, breath knocked out of him. His ears rang like fire alarms. A high-pitched whine overtook everything. Movement. Dust.

  His shoulder stung, the plating there dented by shrapnel.

  Elior was on the ground.

  His hands were no more, and his chest and stomach area were a single massive wound oozing blood. His face stared at the ceiling with unblinking eyes.